


Flatterly

by diadelphous



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diadelphous/pseuds/diadelphous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenya wakes up in a hospital in a strange town in the south. The poison, it seems, was diluted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flatterly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyrstzha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/gifts).



Kenya opened her eyes.

A light shone overhead, bright enough to pierce through her skull. She turned her head to the side, squinting, fluttering her eyelashes. It wasn’t just the light. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat, in time with the beeping of a nearby vitals monitor. 

“What—Where—“

Trees. That was the last thing she remembered. A forest floor the color of blood. Dappled light falling through the pine needles. Over her clothes, over the silver flask, over Stahma’s skin—

Oh God. Stahma.

“Where am I?” Kenya shouted. There was no answer. She tried to prop herself up, but her muscles were weak and she could only hold herself for a few seconds before collapsing down, exhausted. She looked off to the side. There wasn’t much to see. A wooden wall. Shelves sagging with plants—healing plants, most of them.

“Doc?” Kenya rolled over onto her back. The light didn’t hurt her as badly now. “I’m up, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

Still no answer. Kenya took a deep breath and gathered up all her strength and pushed herself up. Immediately she swooned, her head spinning. The beeping off to the side went crazy, _beepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeeeeeep_.

“Keep your head down!” The voice was unfamiliar. Definitely not Doc Yewll’s. “Good lord, girl, don’t you know what you’ve been through?”

 _Betrayal_ , Kenya thought. The word came to her unbidden, but that didn’t make it inaccurate. Betrayal, yes. Stahma had given her the flask, coated with some Votan substance that sank through the pores in her skin and poisoned her.

A cool, dry hand smoothed back Kenya’s forehead. “Rest, rest. Lay down.”  

Exhaustion made Kenya obedient. She lay back.

“There we are,” the voice said. “You need time to rest before you let yourself get so excited.”

The beeping settled into a less worrisome pace. Kenya tilted her head to the side. A woman stood beside her: tall, broadly built. Human. Thank God. No, Kenya wouldn’t have minded seeing a Votan—as long they weren’t Castithan.

“Where am I?” Kenya murmured.

“You’re in Flatterly.”

“Flatterly.” The name was sinuous on her tongue. Sinuous, and completely unfamiliar.

“My name’s Rosa. I’m the doctor here.”

“Here. I don’t understand where here is.” Kenya shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. She took a deep breath and looked over at Rosa. She wore a white lab coat, her dark hair braided and hanging over one shoulder. Kenya had never seen her before.

“Further south than where you’re from.” Rosa smiled. “You had a quite a journey through the Badlands.”

“How could I travel when I don’t even—“ The beeping picked up again, and Rosa made a clucking noise and disappeared out of Kenya’s line of sight. Kenya propped herself up on her elbow, not wanting to be left alone. 

“Lay back down! I told you, you can’t exert yourself too much right now. The poison’s only just starting to wear off.”

“The poison.” Kenya slumped back against her pillows. Rosa returned, this time with a shot glass filled with some clear liquid. Kenya shook her head. “No, absolutely not. I’m not drinking that.”

Rosa looked down at the shot glass. “It’s just a bit of a tequila. Help make you sleepy.”

“Tequila?” Kenya laughed. “I’ve been poisoned and you’re wanting to give me tequila?”

“I didn’t think you’d be too happy if I shot you full of tranquilizers, given everything that’s happened. But I can do that if you’d prefer.”

“Everything that’s happened! I have no idea what’s happened.” Kenya’s head spun. She closed her eyes. The trees. Stahma reaching out for her. The glint of sunlight from the gun. “How did I get here?”

“A Sensoth brought you. In a roller. You’d come into contact with poison, he said.”

A Sensoth. Kenya opened her eyes. How would a Sensoth have found her? Why would he have saved her?

“A diluted dose, though. Obviously.” Rosa gestured at Kenya with the shot glass. “At that dosage, it just induces a coma. A coma that looks like death, to the outsider, but a coma nonetheless. Did you dream?”

“What?”

“Did you dream, while you were under? I’ve always been curious.”

“No, of course not—“ Except that was a lie. She had dreamed. About Stahma, the long sloping curves of her body, the faint tingle of her touch. “No. I didn’t dream.”

“Pity. It would have been nice to have some insight.” Rosa set the shot glass on the table beside the bed. “We don’t know much about Castithan poisons, you know. This has always been an elusive one.”

“Poison,” Kenya said. Of course it had been poison. She had known that even as she took hold of the flask, but she hadn’t seen the truth: she’d been too blinded by that tiny, stupid part of her that had wanted to trust Stahma. Had wanted to run away with her.

“Mmm. No matter now, though. You’re here. And from the looks of things, healing up quite nicely.” Rosa thumped the top of the vitals monitor. The stand wobbled a little but the monitor didn’t fall. “Go on, drink up. The pain’s only going to get worse before it gets better.”

Kenya looked down at the shot glass waiting beside her bed. It looked like water. A deception. Just like Stahma.

“I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“Neither do I.” Rosa shrugged. “The Sensoth that brought you wouldn’t tell me.”

Without warning, a sharp pain shot through Kenya’s temple, then receded back into the depths of her thoughts. She must have winced, because Rosa made a clucking sound and said, “Drink the tequila, darlin’. It’s going to help.”

This time, Kenya didn’t protest. But when she knocked back the shot glass, it wasn’t to ease the slowly-returning pain in her head; it was to erase the memory of Stahma, standing like a ray of sunlight amidst all those winter trees.

 

* * *

 

“When I can I go back home?” Kenya asked when she’d been awake about a week. By that time she wasn’t getting the migraines anymore, but she still had white-soaked dreams about Stahma. She didn’t mention them to Rosa.

“Home?” Rosa looked up from the counter where she’d been preparing Kenya’s daily dose of antitoxin. “You mean Coxtown?”

“What? No.” Kenya pushed up in her bed. “Defiance, I’m from Defiance. Where did you get Coxtown?”

Rosa looked at her over the panoply of beakers and test tubes scattered across the counter. “That’s where that Sensoth said you were from.”

Kenya slumped back. She whispered _Coxtown_ to herself. Where was that? A hundred miles away? Well, a hundred miles from Defiance, not from Flattery. They were so far south they were almost to the borders of the Earth Republic’s southern seat of power. 

Not for the first time, Kenya wondered who that Sensoth was, why he’d decided to save her. She refused to believe that Stahma had anything to do with it.

“Well,” Rosa said, “Defiance or Coxtown, it doesn’t matter. You’re not going to be fit to make the trip through the Badlands any time soon.”

Kenya fell back against her pillow. A minor explosion erupted over on the counter. Rosa cursed and fanned at the plume of bone-colored smoke. 

“I have to get back home,” Kenya said. “Amanda—the election—God, she’s going to need me, no matter what happens—“

“I’m sure Amanda would appreciate you not keeling over in the middle of the desert.” Rosa sat down on the edge of the bed and handed Kenya her antitoxin. It was in the same shot glass the tequila had been, that first day.

“Is this the one you screwed up?” Kenya said.

Rosa made a face of feigned offense. “Of course not. Give me some credit, darlin’.” 

Kenya drank the antitoxin. It burned on the way down, the way hot peppers will burn. Afterwards it always made her feel woozy.

“I have to get back home,” she said. 

“Sometimes what we have to do,” Rosa said, “isn’t what we get to do.”

Kenya rolled her eyes, but the antitoxin was making its way through her system, and her thoughts were separating out like spun sugar.

“Flatterly’s a nice place to live,” Rosa said, her voice far away.

 

* * *

 

Time passed. A day, two days, another week. Another. All that time Kenya was tended to by Rosa and her Liberata nurse Aroor, who worked with a deft, silken touch. For the most part Kenya’s time in the hospital went by in a haze. In her more lucid moments she thought about Defiance and Amanda. She was going to get home, no matter what Rosa said. She’d have to get ahold of a roller, of course, and probably hire a driver, someone who could serve as muscle. That was going to cost money. But Kenya could get money. Kenya knew how to survive.

In her less lucid moments she thought about Stahma.

After about a week and a half, Aroor began walking Kenya around the hospital and its surrounding grounds; it was a small thing, and Kenya didn’t even really have her own room, just a partition separated off by thick curtains. There had been one or two other patients by that point; Kenya had heard their voices chattering with Rosa. But she’d never actually seen them.

There weren’t any other patients the day that Aroor took her for her walk. Kenya’s legs were weak and she wobbled in her steps, leaning on Aroor for support, trying not to let his Votan countenance remind her in any way of Stahma. He led her through the narrow corridor, past windows filled with healing plants, out into the world.

Kenya blinked against the glare. There wasn’t much to see: the landscape was dry and dusty like the Badlands, although the hospital was surrounded by a garden filled with desert plants, cacti and mesquite trees, and there was a paved road leading toward a cluster of buildings off in the distance.

“Is that Flatterly?” Kenya asked, peeling herself away from Aroor and then weaving through the rocky garden. She wobbled up to the gate and leaned against it, squinting at the buildings.

“Yes.” Aroor walked up beside her. “It’s a sleepy place, I’m afraid.”

A sleepy place. Kenya frowned. That could make it difficult, for her to find her roller and her muscle, for her to get back to Defiance.

“I guess I’ll be living here,” she said, looking over at him.

“It’s a good place to live.” He smiled, although it didn’t quite look right on his Liberata features. But Kenya knew he was trying.

She turned back to the buildings. Even the sky was dusty, and it seemed to wrap around Flatterly until it was part of the earth.

A good place to live. It didn’t matter. Kenya was going to find a way home.

 

* * *

 

Kenya didn’t find a way home.

Aroor was right; Flatterly was a sleepy town, the sort of place that didn’t see crime, didn’t see violence, didn’t have need for roller drivers who knew how to navigate the Badlands. It was mostly human, although the Votan had begun to settle in clumps around the outskirts. There was one Castithan family living in a big stone house out in the desert. Kenya heard about them and prayed she’d never seen them when she was out on her own. She still dreamed about Stahma. The antitoxin hadn’t done anything to stop it, and she was afraid that seeing one of those Flatterly Castithans, with their white hair and yellow eyes, would only make things worse.

After Kenya was released from the hospital, Rosa arranged for her to stay at a boarding house near the town water well, and in the mornings sometimes Kenya would sit in the window and watch the good people of Flatterly line up for their water rations.  She took a job tending bar down at the Desert Saloon, pouring homemade beers for the miners who came stomping in from the desert every night covered in reddish-gold dust, swapping stories about cave-ins and Saberwolf attacks. She took a few of them to bed when she was in the mood for that sort of work. That was the nice thing about her old job: even a place like Flatterly had a need for it. Just like liquor, except more fun.

Kenya saved up her money, shoving it in a safe she bought off a traveling trader during one of the market days, but it became clear, after a month had passed, and another, that she didn’t know what she was saving for anymore. Defiance was always on the edge of her thoughts. She doodled the arch on bar napkins whenever she was bored at work. But she had no way to reach it, no way to reach Amanda. 

It was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, until the day that things changed.

It was raining, a rare occurrence in Flatterly from what Kenya could tell—the entire town took on a festive air, like Christmas. The boarding house common closet didn’t have any umbrellas, but she was able to drag out a raincoat two sizes too big, and she pulled the hood over her forehead to keep the water out of her eyes as she walked to work. It looked like the rest of the town didn’t care about getting wet, though. People capered out in the street, not just kids but adults too, grown men with the roughneck look of desert miners. Laughter followed Kenya down the street as she trudged her way to the Desert Saloon. Women set out big glass jars and stood beside them with their hands on their hips, their faces tilted up toward the sky. Catching water, she supposed.

The Desert Saloon was empty save for a pair of men dripping puddles on the floor. They already had a round of shots going, and when Kenya took over for Nathan, he jerked his head toward the men and said, “They’re downing whiskey by the jarful, it feels like. The good stuff, too.”

“Must be the rain,” Kenya said, as if she’d lived here her entire life, as if she would know.

Nathan shrugged. “Brings out the best in people. Hope, you know.” He winked at her, pulled the towel off his shoulder, tossed in the bar. “Speaking of which, I’m feeling pretty hopeful about Lorelei tonight.”

Kenya laughed. Nathan put two fingers to his forehead in a salute and disappeared through the back. She tried to imagine him playing out in the rain like the rest of the town. Couldn’t do it.

Nathan had already wiped the bar down—a couple times, from the look of things. Kenya pulled the Branvall whiskey off the shelf and set it beside her, in case the two patrons called her over. They were deep in conversation, their heads tilted together, yammering on like she was part of the furniture. She picked up a newspaper that Nathan had left behind and scattered it out in front of her, bent her gaze down like she was reading it. She wasn’t. She was listening to the two men. She’d never seen them before, and maybe what Nathan had said was true: Maybe the rain did bring hope.

“—Don’t know what good it’s gonna do,” the older of the two men said. “E-Reps’s gonna be on us faster than you know it.”

The younger didn’t say anything. Kenya lifted her eyes a little. They were both staring at the big dark window that looked out on the street. Rain sluiced over the glass.

“Stupid,” the older one added, and he sipped at his drink. Kenya dropped her eyes again.

E-Rep? What was E-Rep doing all the way out here? What could Flatterly possibly have that interested them?

“I don’t think so,” the younger said, after a while. “It’s a hospital, she’s just doing her job.”

Kenya went rigid. Hospital?

“Yeah, but a Castithan prisoner?” The older one laughed like he was coughing. “Sure, just doing her job. Rosa’s always had a soft spot for the goddamn Votan. What with that nurse of hers—“

Kenya’s heart beat too fast. A Castithan patient? Down at the hospital? For a moment Stahma’s skin flashed in her memory, acres of it, gleaming palely in the ambient lighting of the Need Want. 

She yanked the newspaper up from the counter, folded it over half-heartedly. It wasn’t Stahma at the hospital. Stahma was up in Defiance, conspiring with her husband to destroy everything Amanda had built.

Besides, the older man had said it was a Castithan _prisoner_ , and Kenya couldn’t imagine Stahma allowing such an indignity to occur. She hadn’t even let Kenya point a gun at her without gaining the upper hand.

At that point, the men’s conversation shifted, Castithan prisoners no longer of any interest to them. They talked about the rain, they talked about a miner named Edmond who’d gotten lost out in the Badlands—a funny story, from the way they threw their heads back and guffawed. Kenya stared down at the newspaper and read the same headline over and over, something about a new outpost a few miles outside town. She couldn’t concentrate on anything. A Castithan stranger was in the town hospital, and Kenya couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was Stahma, come back to haunt her.

 

* * *

 

The hospital gleamed in the sun. The rain had continued through the night and into the morning, and Kenya had watched it from her window, telling herself that if it didn’t let up that was a sign that she shouldn’t go to the hospital, that it was stupid to think there was any chance that the Castithan prisoner was Stahma.

And then the rain stopped, of course, right around lunchtime. The sun came out, spilling golden warmth into Kenya’s rented room. She rubbed at her forehead. She knew she wasn’t breaking a promise to herself if she didn’t go, that there was no law, natural or otherwise, compelling her to visit the hospital. She didn’t want to see another Castithan as long as she lived.

Except that was a lie. Kenya knew that now, as she stood in the garden still wet and dripping from the rain. The air was more humid than she’d ever felt it here, and a breeze blew in from the west, bringing with it a whisper of a far-off ocean. The strange weather was getting to Kenya’s head. She did want to see another Castithan again: a particular Castithan, in fact, with long white hair, with smooth shining skin. She had questions, something she hadn’t realized until the possibility presented itself for her to get answers.

_Why did you poison me?_

_Why did you poison me?_

_Why did you poison me?_

Kenya took a deep breath. She told herself not to get her hopes up—and she wasn’t sure why they were up, anyway, if it was the promise of answers, the promise of seeing Stahma again, the chance to act out her initial feelings of rage at the betrayal—because it wasn’t going to be Stahma lying in one of the hospital beds.

Kenya followed the path up to the hospital entrance. No one was at the front desk. Rosa didn’t have a lot of help. Kenya walked over to the front desk anyway, leaned over the counter, felt around for the patient book. She knew where Aroor kept it, tucked behind a box of sweets. She found it easily enough and laid it open. Her heart pounded as she flipped through the pages to the last entry.

 _Jane Doe_ , the ledger read. _Species: Castithan_. _Room 12._

Kenya closed her eyes. Jane Doe. A woman.

She shook her head. No, it wasn’t Stahma. But she still needed to peek in, just to see. Just to make sure.

Kenya replaced the book in its usual place and followed the hallway into the bowels of the hospital. Room twelve. A proper room, not like the shared space she’d been kept in while she was here.

The hallways were empty; so were all of the rooms that Kenya passed. Rosa and Aroor must be in the back, having a late lunch, or else tending to an emergency out in one of the mines. Her footsteps echoes softly against the hospital walls, a slow bassline to the constant, riotous pounding of her heart.

The door to room twelve was closed.

Kenya stopped, put her hand on the knob. Then she leaned forward and pressed her ear to the door. Inside was only silence. She didn’t even hear the beeping of a vitals monitor. _Just get it over with,_ she told herself. _It’s not Stahma. It’s stupid for you to even be here._

She turned the knob. The door swung open on its own.

For a moment, Kenya couldn’t see anything inside the room. The glaring sunlight beamed in through the window, illuminating everything in a golden-white haze. But then she was able to make out a figure sleeping on the bed. The blanket was pulled up to her waist, and she wore a simple hospital shift. Her face was bruised and bandaged, eyes swollen, lips cracked.  Her hair puddled on the pillow beside her, and that sight, that image, of white hair shining in the sunlight, melted into a memory from over a year ago. And that was how Kenya recognized her. That hair, curling over the pillow.

Kenya fell out of the room and slammed up against the opposite wall. The door was still open, she could still see her in there. Stahma. A promise of Stahma had dragged her here, but now that she was faced with the actual Stahma, Kenya didn’t know what to do.

 _Maybe it’s not her_ , Kenya thought. _I didn’t look that close—_

She knew, though. She knew who it was.

Kenya slid forward into the doorway. This time, she looked more closely at the patient’s face, just to be sure. The injuries almost threw her. She couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to mar Stahma’s perfect features. But it was certainly her, even beneath the bruising and bandages. The hair, the curve of a shoulder—it was her.

Stahma’s eyes fluttered open.

Kenya froze. She was caught, trapped. She should never have come here, her answers be damned. Why did she need to know why Stahma tried to kill her? She wasn’t successful. It was probably Datak’s doing, or Stahma wanting to save her own skin.

In that moment, in the gilded light of the hospital room, Kenya was overcome by an old hatred, a rage she had felt in those final seconds before the world collapsed into darkness.

Stahma lifted her head off the pillow, propping herself up on her arms. She squinted. Kenya felt an empathetic pain in the flesh around her own eyes.

“Kenya?” Stahma whispered. Her voice was harsh, rasping. “What vision is this?”

Kenya’s rage surged again, and she balled her hands into fists. “You tried to kill me,” she said.

Stahma blinked. Kenya’s mind whirred, trying to predict what Stahma would say, so she’d have her response ready. But Stahma didn’t say anything. She only slumped back down in the bed and closed her eyes.

“Not even an apology,” Kenya said. “What a surprise.” 

“Kenya—“ 

“It didn’t work,” Kenya said. “Whatever you were trying to do, it didn’t work.”

Stahma’s eyes fluttered open. The sunlight flowed around her.

“Yes it did,” she said. She smiled and for a moment her face didn’t look bruised and tired, but incandescent. “It did work. You’re here.”

Kenya was suddenly frozen in place. “Here?” She wasn’t going to let her voice shake. “You mean at the hospital? I just wanted to see the person who—“

“No.” Stahma shifted beneath the hospital blankets, fabric falling in ripples over her body. “No, I mean here. In Flatterly.”

Kenya slumped up against the wall. Blood rushed through her ears and her heart hammered against the inside of her chest. “That doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice seemed far away. “You wanted to kill me.”

“What?” Stahma struggled to sit up, her arms shaking and her hair falling into her face. Kenya was struck with the urge to help her, but she stayed pressed against the wall. The blanket fell away and revealed Stahma’s frail body, unfamiliar in the rough fabric of her hospital gown. She was thinner than Kenya remembered.

“I know what happened to me,” Kenya spat out. “You poisoned the flask. I was stupid enough to touch it. Fortunately, a Sensoth saw everything that happened, and dragged me to safety.”

Stahma lifted her face to Kenya. Her eyes burned with their yellow intensity.

She was smiling _._

No—she was _laughing_.

“What?” Kenya demanded. “What’s so funny? That someone was able to pull the wool over your eyes so that your stupid little plan didn’t work? Or should I say Datak’s plan? It was his idea, wasn’t it? All that talk about you wanting to be your own person, writing poetry and all that bullshit—it didn’t mean anything. You still do everything he tells you!”

Stahma laughed harder. She leaned against the bed frame, her head dropped back, her shoulders shaking with her laughter. Kenya’s rage returned with a sudden force, threatening to choke off her air. Stahma poisoned her and now she was _laughing_ about it.

“You silly woman.” Stahma’s laughter dissolved into a cough. She doubled over. Kenya didn’t offer her help—this time, she didn’t even want to. She just stood at the edge of the room and glared at Stahma as she choked and coughed in the pool of lemony sunlight.

When she finished, Stahma lifted her head. Her eyes were brighter yellow than usual, and watery, her lips flecked with spit. But she was smiling, that same incandescent smile as before.

“Silly, silly Kenya,” she said.

“Stop saying that.”

“You are a ridiculous woman sometimes.” Stahma wiped her mouth with the edge of her blanket, and somehow she managed to make that action look elegant. Kenya looked away.

“You think some Sensoth just happened to come across you in the woods, saw you dying, brought you here?” Stahma laughed again, and the sound came from deep in her throat. Kenya was struck with a twinge of worry—what exactly had happened to her? Where did she get those bruises?

She shoved the thought aside.

“The poison I gave you is called mindossa,” Stahma said. “It’s one of our deadliest weapons. Only minutes lapse between the time it touches the skin and the time it destroys the body.” Her expression was grave now, her eyes large, genuine. But Kenya had been fooled by those eyes before.

“And you gave it to me,” Kenya said. “I ought to put some poison in the IV drip, would you like that? A fair trade.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Stahma drew the blanket up around her narrow shoulders. She did seem too thin—and for a moment Kenya wondered what things were like in Defiance, that the wife of the mayor could look as if she were starving. “I’m trying to explain to you that no Sensoth could have saved you.” She looked at Kenya then, and Kenya couldn’t look away no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how stupid she knew it was for her to be standing here in this sunlit room feeling an old rush of tenderness.

“Then why aren’t I dead?” Kenya finally said. “Are you ever going to explain that?”

“I sang to you.” Stahma smiled again, although this was a faint smile, flickering. “A Castithan lullaby. My mother used to sing it to me, and I used to sing it to Alak, when he was a baby. It’s a song for protection.” 

Kenya didn’t say anything. Her heart was pounding again, beating in a way it hadn’t beat in a long time.

“The mindossa—it has certain properties. It can be controlled by voice, programmed to react in specific ways.” Stahma took a deep breath. Her bruises glowed against her pale skin. “You were right about one thing, silly woman, that Datak asked me to kill you. He wanted me to prove my loyalty to him, wanted to punish me for what I’d one. Death was too easy a way out.” She touched the corner of one eye, looked away. “But I couldn’t do it. And so I programmed the poison.” She laughed a little. “Alak had to help me. I didn’t tell him the details, but he’s always been a good boy. It was poison when Datak gave it to me, poison when you touched it.” She lifted her gaze to Kenya again and Kenya was frozen in place. The sun reflected off Stahma’s hair, white-gold and perfect. “But as I sang I changed its properties, and it no longer induced death, but a coma.”

Kenya felt as if all the air had rushed out of her body. She couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure she was even still alive, if the only thing keeping her conscious was the sunlight and the sound of Stahma’s voice.

 _Just like that cold day in the woods_.

“I promised I would take care of you,” Stahma said. “And I did. I had a roller waiting, just as I promised. The Sensoth, too, with instructions to bring you here, to this place.” She gestured with one hand. “Flatterly. A name on a map. I picked it at random. I thought it would be safer that way.”

Kenya’s thought whirled around. She couldn’t catch on to them, and although she knew there were a million better questions,  the only thing she was able to spit out was, “So why’d you come back?”

Stahma’s expression transformed, the warmth freezing over. She lay back on her pillow and dropped her head toward the window. The sunlight washed out her pale features.

“Stahma?” Kenya stepped forward, hesitant. She wasn’t sure she believed Stahma’s story. She wanted to. But sometimes wanting something wasn’t enough. “Is this some trick?”

“A trick?” Stahma was still staring into the sunlight. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, I _wonder_.”

Stahma looked over at her and Kenya was snapped into place again at the sight of the bruises. Maybe it wasn’t a trick. Or maybe the bruises were part of the trick.

God, she should never have let herself become so involved with a Castithan.

“No, it’s not a trick,” Stahma said. “I came here because I didn’t know where else to go.”

Kenya fell silent. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I was arrested,” Stahma said, and her voice was flat, without inflection. It took Kenya moment to understand the gravity of the words. Arrested?

“For murder,” Stahma went on.

“My murder?” Kenya couldn’t help herself.

Stahma made a choking sound that could have been a laugh, although it was strained and painful-sounding. “No. There was a man with the Earth Republic, and Datak—“ Stahma hesitated, and Kenya could see the way she was drawing herself, trying to find her old poise and grace amidst the pale white sheets of the hospital bed. It was her defense shield, that grace. “Datak behaved rashly towards him. You have to understand, the Earth Republic moved into the mines, they went back on our deal—“

“Shocker,” Kenya said.

“Yes, Datak was wrong to trust them.” Stahma sighed, and she looked back out the window again, and for a moment she seemed far away. “Datak killed him. Colonel Marsh. I only found the body afterwards.” He eyes shimmered. “But I tried to help him, to protect him, like a good Castithan wife—“ She covered her mouth with her hand a choked back a sob. Kenya didn’t know what she was feeling, if it was pity or self-righteousness, tenderness or scorn. 

“You had the chance to escape,” she finally said, after a moment or two had passed, Stahma staring into the sun. “With me. We could have left all that behind—“

“That was impossible!” Stahma slammed one hand down on the mattress, and although it only made a soft, powdery  _thump_ , Kenya still jolted. “I couldn’t leave, he would have tracked me down!”

“Not if he killed some E-Rep general.“

“I didn’t know that was going to happen! I could only do what I thought of in the moment, and I just wanted you to be safe, I wanted you to be away from him.”  Stahma wiped at one eye, a tear glistening in the sunlight. 

Kenya looked down at her hands. Her doubt was evaporating. _She only wanted me to be away from him_.

“We were arrested, of course, and taken out of the city—they feared the extent of Datak’s power. Through the Badlands, toward the West Coast—“ Stahma closed her eyes and dropped her head back and for a moment she almost seems to have fallen asleep, she looked that peaceful. “I couldn’t go to prison. I couldn’t leave Alak behind, not there, not with the Earth Republic.” Her voice hitched and she rolled over onto her side, hair falling across her face. “That’s why I came here.” Her voice was muffled. Kenya had to lean forward to hear. “Amanda’s still there, you know. We have to go back. We have to tell them what the Earth Republic wants to do with the mines, to the town—they’ll destroy them all.”

“What are you talking about?”  

“The mines! The Earth Republic is digging deep into the mines, and there’s danger there—“ Stahma took a deep, rattling breath, and Kenya leaned forward, chest tight with worry. She couldn’t help herself.

“We have to stop them,” Stahma said, and then she sank into her pillows and blankets. 

Kenya moved forward, cautious. Tears shimmered on Stahma’s cheeks. Kenya stopped a few paces away from the bed. Another tear slipped out of the corner of Stahma’s eye and landed in a dark spot on the pillow.

“I’m so worried about him,” she whispered. 

For one stupid moment, Kenya thought she was talking about Datak, and her anger swelled—but then Stahma whispered, “Alak,” and reached up to wipe her eyes.

Kenya felt hot with shame. She knelt down beside the bed. Stahma looked over at her.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Kenya said. “He was always resourceful.”

Stahma smiled weakly. “Yes. He’s a good boy, don’t you think? I need to get back to him.”

“You can’t go anywhere right now,” Kenya said. “You’re in no position to travel. And even if you were, I’ve been trying to leave since I got here, and without rollers—“

Stahma grabbed her hand. Her touch surprised Kenya, but she didn’t pull away. She didn’t want to. 

“We can find rollers,” Stahma said. “The two of us. Together.”

Together. Kenya stared down at her. She didn’t think she would ever be _together_ with Stahma ever again. Not for pleasure, and certainly not for heroics. 

“I was always at my best when I was with you,” Stahma whispered. 

Kenya thought about the trees, the winter wind, the coldness of the flask against her palms. 

“What was the song?” Kenya said. “The one that saved me?”

This room was nothing like that day in the forest. The light was bright and golden, the air warm. There were no trees. No snow. Only Kenya and Stahma, linked by a touch.

“It’s a lullaby, as I said.  A promise of safety.” Stahma paused. Then she closed her eyes and began to sing. Her voice was thin and reedy, and the lyrics were in Castithan, but Kenya could hear the beauty in the melody. Her skin prickled. She squeezed Stahma’s hand tighter, and Stahma’s voice fell away. She opened her eyes and looked right at Kenya.

“I could never let you die,” she said.

Kenya couldn’t stop trembling. She let go of Stahma’s hand, but only so she could touch Stahma’s face, gently. Stahma smiled at her, and Kenya felt a rush of something that was a little like forgiveness, a little like love.

“I guess it’s my turn to help you,” Kenya said.


End file.
